Shopping, Sherlock Style
by bsmadi
Summary: Sherlock is forced to go shopping with John, and forced is the operative word, at least in Sherlock's mind. It is so boring. Or is it? As always, Sherlock finds a way to have some fun.


"John," Sherlock was absolutely not whinging, because a Holmes never whinges, but… "I'm bored." Okay, well maybe, under extreme circumstances they did whinge, a little.

"Yes, Sherlock, I know." John, Sherlock's best and, in many ways, only friend, pointed to a tin of tomatoes and because John's arm was in a sling, Sherlock reached for them. "I know, because this is the sixth, no, seventh, time you've told me this since we've been here, and that doesn't count the two peremptory times in the cab." Sherlock could almost hear John's frown as the tomatoes bounced into the trolley after being expertly slung over his shoulder. "For someone who hates repeating himself, you do it a lot."

"Yes, well…" Sherlock took a moment to think, and to put a couple of tins of corn in the trolley, "I haven't been this bored since the time I was locked in the broom closet during the case you so wittily named "The Mobster's Mop" – (and here, Sherlock made sure to use the air quotes so as to really emphasize his disdain for that particular title, mostly because the evidence had been found not on the mop, but on the broom) – "and I was in there for thirty hours."

"Yes, I know. I was in there with you." John turned around, pointedly not responding to Sherlock's best pointed look. "Grab some beans, will you please?" Sherlock turned to grab a tin off the shelf. "Not those! Jesus, Sherlock, you'd think the world's most observant man would notice what kind of beans he's been eating for the past year." Sherlock hid his smile at John's blush after one of the customers, a man in a baggy, blue jumper and a basket full of energy bars and bottled water frowned his disapproval of John's increasingly loud voice "And," John's voice took a softer timber. "Just for the record, it was only three hours."

'Oh, right. You _were_ there. No wonder I thought it was longer." Sherlock stood in front of a dazzling array of beans and contemplated, not wanting to give his flatmate the satisfaction of the wrong choice. God's sake, who knew there were so many choices? Did it even matter, really, which he chose? "Oh, please." He curled his lip just a bit just show how little he cared. "They're basically all beans…" He waved a hand in dismissal of all things legumish. "In sauce."

"You don't know, do you?" Was John smirking? He was. John was smirking. This day was truly never going to end. This day was going to last for weeks.

"Fine." Sherlock hung his head because if he didn't see them, then neither the smirk nor the twenty different kinds of tins of beans had to exist and maybe this whole day could just end. "Since I don't really remember ever even eating any beans in the last year, maybe you could just show me which ones you eat."

"Yep. I could do that, but you would have to move about three inches to the right." There was a pause as Sherlock stubbornly added John to the list of things that could possibly cease to exist if you ignored them. John, as it turned out, when it came to existing, could be equally as stubborn and, as a consequence, Sherlock found that it's very hard not to move when being shoved out of the way with the good shoulder of an ex-rugby player. Sherlock managed to make his stumble trip look almost like he just stepped to the side and bumped blue jumper man, which said man in said jumper obviously did not like at all. While Sherlock worked at trying to find words to apologize to the rather large man, John grabbed two tins in one hand and placed them in the trolley.

Sherlock watched John walk down the aisle to the pasta section, leaving him, the man in the baggy blue jumper, and the trolley, behind. John bent to pick up a box of spaghetti from a lower shelf and turned, arm out in front of him, obviously expecting to drop the box into the trolley. As it was, said trolley had not moved, neither had Sherlock, and the spaghetti dropped to the floor. There was a very audible sigh from the pasta section as John bent to pick up the box, thankfully with spaghetti still safely inside. He then looked down to the beans with his head tilted slightly toward his bad shoulder and his eyebrows raised in an expression that was clearly shouting, "Get the hell down here, you git, before I actually shout, get the hell down here, you git."

Sherlock responded by raising his eyes heavenward and sighing dramatically, clearly, yet soundlessly, saying, "I'm still bored and you aren't helping." He did, however, get the hell down there, saving John the trouble of shouting.

"Why are we here?"

"What?"

"You heard me." Sherlock pick up a box of little pasta o's because they cook faster and were, therefore, more efficient than spaghetti, and certainly not because they looked much more fun to eat. "And I do hate repeating myself."

"Yeah, so I've heard." John took the o's out of the trolley and tried to put them back on the shelf, but found he couldn't quite reach. "Many times, in fact." He nodded to the box in his hand and said, "Do you mind?"

"Not at all." Sherlock took the box, smiled, and put it in the trolley while John contemplated whether he wanted to buy a bottled sauce. "But really, John. Why are we here?"

John pursed his lips and flexed the fingers of his unslung hand twice before answering. Sherlock realized, three seconds later than he should, that he had just went one step too far. He could only hope that John would remember that the last time he lost his temper in a public place they both ended up in mall jail to _cool the hell down_ , as the American in the poor fitting uniform put it. But seriously, it wasn't as if the "Bluewater Bomber" would have waited for John to finish trying on those trousers, so honestly the whole thing should have been a non issue. They did, manage to catch the man, and diffuse the bomb, and it wasn't as if John's boxer shorts were all that indecent.

"I am here," Oh, good. This was going to be barely audible mad John. That should work. "Because we are nearly out of food. You are here because, thanks to you, I have one working arm."

Sherlock pressed his lips tightly together and shook his head once and said probably the one thing he really shouldn't have said. "It's hardly my fault that you walk about in your stocking feet"

"I slipped on sweat from a week old bag of toes that you were keeping in the microwave."

"It was an important experiment, John." Sherlock still didn't really understand the problem here. It wasn't like they ever actually used the microwave to actually cook food. Well, not since the eyeballs. "I was testing the rate of growth of yeast between human toes under sweaty conditions. A man's life may have depended on it." This last bit was said in unison, seriously by Sherlock, mockingly by John. "At any rate, if you had been wearing shoes like any sensible person, then you would not have slid, hence, not my fault."

"Says the man who wore a sheet and no pants to Buckingham Palace." John grabbed a loaf of Italian bread as they passed a bin and tossed it in the trolley. "And, if you will recall, I wasn't wearing my shoes because someone thought they should be put in the oven."

"Well, in my defence, they did have sweat on them." Sherlock stopped mid-aisle as he slowly played back what he had just said. "Well, yes. Upon review, I may have been somewhat to blame, but…"

"It was for science. Yes,I know." John would have probably rolled his eyes if he hadn't just at that moment been bumped by the blue jumper guy who was now trying to reach over their trolley for a jar of jam.

"Oi, Watch it!" John grimaced when his arm was jostled.

"Careful." Sherlock nearly growled. "The man is obviously injured."

"Right, sorry." Blue jumper stepped back, arms up with palms out and head down. "Just in a hurry is all."

"Yes. Obviously."

Sherlock scanned the man looking for the perfect comment on his life to punish him for hurting John, when he was struck by how clean his hands were compared to the rest of his body, which was just this side of hygienically challenged at best. A red flag seemed to be waving from those hands, so Sherlock continued his scan. Jumper way too big, perhaps not his own, perhaps meant to cover…. Ah yes, there it was. Small irregular, brown dots just at the collar of the shirt, getting larger and closer together as they headed down, in a line, to below the jumper. And there, on the trousers, another line seeming to lead up. Sherlock could see that the shirt's sleeves had been rolled up under the jumper, and he would be willing to bet that, were they visible, they too would be stained in brown. The man was obviously right handed, as evidenced by how he had used that hand to grab his items from the shelf, and, this along with the placement of the stains led evidence to the idea that the man in the blue jumper had recently stabbed someone or something and was trying to hide it. His obvious hurry and the easy to prepare contents of his basket seemed to indicate that he was going on the run.

This series of thoughts all took less time than it would take most people to formulate a sentence, so Sherlock, of course, had to formulate one.

"Please don't let our shopping interfere with your get away."

John looked from Sherlock, to the man, to his basket, then back to the man and finally saw the blatantly obvious. The man, for his part, looked from Sherlock, to John, to his own basket, back to Sherlock and finally did the blatantly obvious. He threw the basket at John and ran like hell.

Luckily, since the basket was laden with water, bars and tins of prepared pasta of various sorts, it was fairly untossable and landed at John's feet and not his shoulder as originally planned. Damage was done to his shoes, brand new trainers, thank you very much, to replace the ones that had ended up as baked goods, but, since trainers are easier to replace than shoulders, Sherlock was sure John wouldn't be too upset.

While John busied himself cleaning up the mess that the, well, perpetrator now seemed the appropriate title, had made, Sherlock used his mobile to actually call DI Lestrade. "I think you might want to have one of your people pick up the man in the large, blue jumper that is currently running down Marlybone Street. You either are now, or will be soon, looking at him as a suspect in his wife's, or possibly her dog's, murder." Plunging the phone back into his coat with a flourish of a job well done, he looked to his friend who seemed to be deciding whether or not to just put the water from the man's basket into their trolley.

John held up one of the bottles. "You don't think they'll need these for fingerprints or anything, do you?"

"I shouldn't think so."

"Good." John sighed. "That'll save us the trouble of going down that aisle, so nearly done."

Once again taking the reigns (so to speak) of the trolley, Sherlock followed after John as they made their way to the check out. "Oh, thank God!" he moaned with all the drama of a teenager forced to celebrate New Year's with his parents. "I am so bored!"


End file.
